13

Formative Assessment Strategies

Cooperating Teacher
1. The richest source of information about your students may come from your cooperating
teacher. Have a conversation with your cooperating teacher focusing on three students in the
class.
2. Ask your cooperating teacher about how these students are doing overall, about what motivates
them, what their strengths and weaknesses are as learners, and what works best with them.
3. Take notes on what your cooperating teacher tells you-this will help you later when you
analyze your students work.

Homework, Quizzes, and Tests
1. The easiest form of information to collect or analyze about your students learning is their
regular work in the form of homework, quizzes, and tests.
2. This information will be richer if you include questions that require students to explain their
thinking. It is especially helpful to ask questions that require students to apply their thinking to
a new situation that you have not discussed in class. This requires flexible thinking on their part
and should reveal how they are thinking better than questions that allow them to say back what
they have memorized.
3. Photocopy examples that helped you learn about your students in ways that helped you adjust
your teaching.

Exit Tickets
1. Give students tickets small pieces of paper designed to look like tickets, but with space for
writing.
2. Ask students two questions. One that requires a factual answer about the big idea of todays
lesson, but in their own words. A second question should require more explanation of a
concept.
3. Give students five minutes at the end of class to write their answers. Their names do not go on
these exit tickets.
4. They must give you an Exit Ticket to leave class for the day.
5. Analyze the tickets to learn how many students got the big idea and how they understand it or
misunderstand it. Photocopy 4-6 on a single sheet of paper for your portfolio. Select ones that
you learned something about your students from that you didnt know before reading the Exit
Tickets.

One-Minute Papers
1. Give students an open-ended question and one to three minutes to write their answers.
2. Good questions: What is the most important thing we discussed today? Or What was the most
confusing idea presented today?
3. Collect the papers and use for promoting discussion, identifying misconceptions, or confusion.
4. Photocopy samples of the papers to use with your reflections.
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Concept Mapping
1. Provide small groups of students with a list of about 15 related words that might fit well in an
outline.
2. Give them small sticky notes to write the words on.
3. Ask them to create a concept map by moving the sticky notes around on a piece of paper until they
have them in the right place.
4. Model for them on the board how to draw connections between words and emphasize that the
connections should be labeled with words describing the nature of the relation (leads to, is an
example of, sometimes goes with, cant happen without, etc.).
5. Walk around while students are creating their concept maps-ask questions about why they are
placing words where they do. Keep in mind that the purpose of this exercise at this point is to find
out what they are thinking, not for them to get the right answer. So dont prompt them with correct
answers.
6. Collect the papers, analyze them to find out what students know, dont know, and what their
misconceptions are. Do not write on the concept maps, though you may want to photocopy one or
two for your portfolio. If you do this, select interesting examples that helped you adapt your
teaching.
7. Create your own concept map-perhaps on overhead transparency.
8. The next day-hand back the concept maps and show your concept map to the class. Emphasize that
there is more than one way to organize a group of related terms. Ask groups of students to compare
theirs to yours and explain how theirs are different and whether and in what ways they think they
should change theirs.

Problem Solving Observation
1. Give the class a complex problem to solve. Ask them to work in pairs.
2. Good problems will have more than one part and will require students to explain their thinking
to each other. It may be helpful to use problems that require students to show their thinking in
more than one way. Examples of showing their thinking in more than one way might include
graphing, diagramming, explaining how someone with a different perspective might answer the
question, and generating examples.
3. Join one of the groups while they work. Have in mind that you are observing and focus in a
way that you can write down later what you observed. You may find it helpful to jot down 2 or
3 words during this observation to prompt your recall later.
4. Prompt students to explain their thinking to each other. Ask them to say aloud what they are
thinking while they are solving the problem. Prompt them with questions such as Why how
are you deciding to or What were you thinking about when you did that.
5. As soon as practical jot down notes about what you observed-especially including notes about
students problem solving process and what they understand about the process.

Survey Students
1. Although this is not formative assessment of their learning, you can learn a great deal by
surveying students.
2. A sample survey is provided on the last page-you can photocopy this survey for your students.

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Using feedback from students

Engage students in the process
With any of the methods for getting information from and about students, you can engage students
in discussion about their ideas. Present students ideas to the class and use their ideas as a basis for
class discussion. Formative assessment and student surveys should be seen as a dialogue between
you and your students.

See your teaching through your students' eyes
Try to understand how your students are interpreting and making sense of what your are teaching.
You can be much more effective if you are responsive to your students learning and you can only
do this by trying to see your teaching from their perspective.

Identify Misconceptions
Consider where student misconceptions are coming from. Identify key misconceptions on the topic
you are teaching about-usually there are one or two key misconceptions that are shared by a large
number of your students. Student misconceptions are very powerful because they are based on
student experience. Bring these misconceptions out in the open and find ways for students to
challenge their own misconceptions. Common ways for challenging misconceptions (1) direct
refutation, (2) examples that point out why the misconceptions are not reasonable, (3) using visual
models that give students an alternative way of understanding, (4) active learning strategies that
engage students in thinking (rather than in passively receiving).

Photocopying, Saving, Reflection Tips
1. You will be extremely busy while you are teaching and when you are not teaching you will be
extremely busy preparing. You will find it helpful to set up as simple a system as possible for
looking at, analyzing, and saving copies of your students work.
2. As part of your student teaching you are asked to reflect periodically on your lessons. These
reflections will be more specific, substantial, helpful to you, and easier to write if you look at
examples of formative assessment or your own informal notes while you do your journaling.
3. Keep a box somewhere where you can place photocopies of student work. When you finish
your student teaching and start to create a portfolio you will have time to select and organize
these pieces, but for now just have one place where you can store them so that you wont loose
them.
4. When you write your mid-unit and end-of-unit reflections look through the pieces in this box.
This will help you see your students progress over a period of time.
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Student Survey

In this class I feel:

Important 1 2 3 4 5 Ignored
Comfortable 1 2 3 4 5 Uncomfortable
Involved in the lessons 1 2 3 4 5 Restless, Bored
Part of a Team 1 2 3 4 5 Alone
Sure of where I stand 1 2 3 4 5 Not sure where I stand



The teacher has been:

Prepared 1 2 3 4 5 Unprepared
Fair 1 2 3 4 5 Unfair
Helpful 1 2 3 4 5 Unhelpful
Well-Organized 1 2 3 4 5 Lacking Organization
Clear about what's expected 1 2 3 4 5 Unclear about what's expected
Sensitive to my needs 1 2 3 4 5 Insensitive to my needs
Fully engaged and excited 1 2 3 4 5 Seemingly bored
Knowledgeable 1 2 3 4 5 Not on top of the subject
Able to make difficult ideas 1 2 3 4 5 Over our heads
accessible and interesting



Our Work has generally been:

Thought provoking 1 2 3 4 5 Dull
Effective in helping me learn 1 2 3 4 5 Ineffective in helping me learn
Too fast 1 2 3 4 5 Too slow
Too easy 1 2 3 4 5 Too hard
Too much the same 1 2 3 4 5 Too unpredictable
Too abstract 1 2 3 4 5 Too simplistic
Too little 1 2 3 4 5 Too much